Winesburg, Ohio a hit for any generation!
This collection of short stories originally titled The Book Of the Grotesque is a superb and delightful read by Sherwood Anderson. The book Winesburg, Ohio should be a required reading for teens/young adults somewhere throughout their lives Anderson has a unique way of drawing his reader in with his mix of writing styles, making one think their actually witnessing something unseen.
Anderson captivates his audience using the plot not as his main focus, but rather the lonely lives of each carefully selected character he’s developed. He manages to use one main character to tie the others together, but writes in both third and first person to give you the sensation of reading into each persons life, rather than having the main character witness everything that’s happening.
While some critics have found Anderson’s story, “pessimistic...destructive...and morbidly sexual”, I think it was just the thing society needed in the time he read the book. When one reads Winesburg, Ohio they’ll realize Anderson must have read up on his Sigmund Freud before he wrote it. He writes in reference to sexual desires, loneliness, and the need to break free of their small town mind set through-out the book.
While some may view the book as pessimistic because of his reoccurring themes of loneliness and repression, I think it’s something that everyone has dealt with in their lives and just need to come to grips with. Society is not all flowers and sunshine, there is always a dismal cloud hovering somewhere. Anderson does a fantastic job of showing what every human feels deep inside and exemplifying the fact that each person needs to figure out where they’re going, and what they’re meant to do to lead a happy life.
Somethin' I had to write, yet again, for English
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